I help people reconnect to the natural world because of my dad

Teage O'Connor

There's a short hike that starts just north of my family’s old favorite blueberry picking spot up in Girdwood, Alaska. One memory of this hike is particularly vivid: With a peanut butter and honey sandwich sticking to my cheeks and fingers, I gaze at the gentle puffy clouds whimsically passing through the stunning cerulean sky back and then down to the trail stretching the length of the ridge we are trekking. As I try to breathe in the soft lavenders of a little flower I’ve spotted, my feet steady my body, which is leaning too far forward over the edge of the trail in excitement. I’m a child, and I purposely lean too far and fall into the plants, my tiny hands grasping and then rending the flower’s beauty from the rest of the plant – the incorrigible collector in me.

My father’s gentle voice, “It’s okay to pick it, but now you’re responsible for it. They’re edible, maybe try eating it.” I do, and it’s subtle and sweet and tastes blue like the sky. I reach my sticky hands for another: “Before eating too many, remember that you might one day bring your own son back here to eat from that same patch of bluebells.”

In that memory of “Bluebells in Alaska,” one that still writes most of the thoughts that trail through my head, my dad reminded me of an ethic that makes my blood red and my breath humid. My father, who passed away when I was 8, got most of his teaching in before I had the presence of mind to say, “Thank you.” My “thank you” to him is to create, share, and encourage moments like these for others.

— Teage O’Connor, Founder, Crow’s Path